Daily Update: GT Advanced’s Bankruptcy, The Magazine is Shutting Down, Priceless Beats

Good morning, Just a heads up that there will be no Daily Update tomorrow. It is a national holiday in Taiwan and I will be traveling with my family. On to the update: GT Advanced’s Bankruptcy More details are slowly emerging about the shocking bankruptcy of Apple sapphire supplier GT Advanced Technologies Inc. From theSubscribe […]

Daily Update: The NBA and the State of TV, Sony WebTV, Privacy versus User Experience

Good morning, As I noted, this week’s Daily Updates might be irregular; indeed, today’s is arriving several hours late. I apologize for the delay. I also apologize that the first two items are U.S. centric (yep, TV again). On to the update: The NBA and the State of TV The NBA’s ratings have been decliningSubscribe […]

Daily Update: PayPal and Square, Facebook Payments?, Samsung: What Now?

Good morning, As I note below, I finally posted my PayPal article. Check it out! On to the update: PayPal and Square Yesterday I wrote on Stratechery about how PayPal is destined to grow increasingly irrelevant as innovation in the payments space moves to merchant account-based purchases: PayPal’s success in solving the peer-to-peer problem hasSubscribe […]

PayPal’s Incentive Problem

By winning on the web, PayPal was actually disadvantaged when it came to competing in mobile, because its incentives were already shaped by a different problem.

Daily Update: HP to Split, A Secure Golden Key, Microsoft’s Android Cash Cow

Good morning, My piece on PayPal will drop later today, so keep an eye out for that. Just a heads-up that I’m traveling this week so updates may be a bit irregular. Thanks for your patience. On to the update: HP to Split Big news from The Wall Street Journal: Hewlett-Packard Co. plans to separateSubscribe […]

American Girl, Minecraft, and the Next Generation of Builders (Daily Update Sample)

While full-length articles on Stratechery are free, I also offer the Daily Update for $10/month and $100/year. Each day I write at varying lengths about 2~3 topics of the day, delivered to your inbox, private RSS feed, or via direct link on the right side of this page. The following is a sample of a […]

Podcast: Exponent Episode 020 – I Want You to Be Wrong

On the newest episode of Exponent, the podcast I co-host with James Allworth: In this week’s episode Ben and James discuss the problems with Ello’s business model, James’ discomfort with Facebook, and why Social Networks always have ads. We also talk about incentives and something surprising Ben learned from the notorious Episode 18. Links Ben […]

Daily Update: eBay and PayPal, Poor Pebble, Intel Caves to GamerGaters

Good morning, The eBay/PayPal piece I keep promising has turned into something bigger, and it’s not done yet, so I’ve gone ahead and done some more straightforward analysis of the deal below; I think it’s a good move. I did want to follow up on the Box item yesterday to make two points that ISubscribe […]

Daily Update: The Player’s Tribune and Corporate Journalism, Box Delays IPO, Rovio Layoffs

Good morning, I’m planning to write about the Paypal spinoff later today, so keep an eye out for that. On to the update: The Player’s Tribune and Corporate Journalism Over the last few weeks there have been a number of widely-shared articles despairing about the spread of corporate journalism, including this long piece in theSubscribe […]